


The Archer

by finx



Series: The Other Fiery Redhead [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (friendship squad not military squad these kids are like ten), Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Alternate Universe - Tortall, Gen, Natasha's not sure how she also became part of his squad but she is very suspicious, Natasha's pretending to be a boy, Steve's the prince and the Commandos are his squad, also Bucky's the queen's ward and has been raised with Steve as a brother, she's sure of it, so she can become a knight, so that's why he's always with Steve for diplomatic royal family stuff, this whole friendship business is a mistake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-11
Updated: 2018-04-20
Packaged: 2018-08-14 09:26:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 15,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8007937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/finx/pseuds/finx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>A red-headed girl on the way to Corus, determined to become a knight of the realm. You've heard the story before, but – this is not quite that story.</i>
</p><p> </p><p>That Tortall au where Natasha dresses up as a boy to become a knight. In this installment, which is currently the only installment, her idiot friends drag her along to go to the circus in the dark of night, in a foreign country, while there's a peace treaty being negotiated that they could jeopardize with one misstep. Luckily, the circus' archer has got her back.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The initial setup is pretty much the same as in the first Tortall book. If you're unfamiliar with that, check out the notes at the bottom of the page!

In the third month of Natasha’s first year as a page, Queen Sarah took a third of the court with her to Tusaine to cement the details of a peace treaty between the two countries. The pages wouldn't normally be taken along on a trip this small, but the king of Tusaine had two sons about Steve’s age, and the queen thought taking Steve to meet them might help keep things friendly.

“It _is_ one of Queen Sarah’s favorite political moves,” Pinky had commented over dinner, the day the trip was announced. “Whenever there are any sort of peace talks going on, even within the kingdom like that mess in Port Legann five years back, she rounds up all the high-born kids in the palace who won’t throw a tantrum and start a war, and she takes them along.”

“It works,” Jim pointed out. “My emperor was pleased that she felt safe enough in Yaman to bring the children of her nobility. It shows trust.”

“And now you’re here,” said Sawyer.

Jim’s eyes crinkled in that way that meant he was smiling but too Yamani-polite to show it. “And now I’m here.”

“Plus it means she can take a whole regiment of the King’s Own with her,” Dugan added, “since everyone’s so happy about the kids that they forget to take offense at a little extra security.”

According to Sawyer, Lord Phillip had blown his top when he’d heard about the trip. He’d told the queen that if Steve was going to skip months of training every time she wanted to play happy families with foreign royalty, he wouldn’t be a knight until he was thirty-two. The queen had responded that it was his job, not hers, to make sure that didn’t happen.

So Steve went to Tusaine, and the rest of the pages went with him, lest the future ruler of the realm become the oldest page in the history of Tortall. Every evening when the great procession stopped to make camp, Lord Phillip took the pages off the road a ways and they practiced fighting with staffs and swords over varied terrain. After an hour or so of trying to whack each other while hiding behind trees, they cleaned themselves up to serve dinner for Queen Sarah and her attendants. Natasha always had to sneak off and wash in private, using a large bowl she’d begged off a servant in the castle just before leaving and a bar of soap she’d nicked from the bathhouse. She was never fully clean. Master Coulsridge, the seneschal, gave her flatly disapproving looks and placed her with the lesser nobility, where she might be somewhat less offensive.

They stopped at several fiefs along the way, including Rumlow’s Peak. Natasha was surprised to see Brock engulfed by a horde of happily shrieking children, all of them demanding piggy-back rides. He had five sisters, it turned out, two of them already married with children of their own, and an alarming number of small cousins. These regarded the other pages with wary suspicion when Brock turned to introduce them all, until Bucky stepped forward and offered a courtly bow to one of the seven-year-olds, saying “Who might this lovely lady be?” The girl giggled, Bucky grinned, and the tension was broken.

Over the next two days the pages had an enthusiastic audience for their exercises. The older girls brought needlework or spinning to do while they watched; the younger children just ran around the pages and cheered whenever something happened they thought was impressive. Lord Phillip glared at them all democratically and then ignored them.

The noise was distracting, and time and again the steady clack of wooden practice weapons would be interrupted by a yelp of pain as someone’s fingers got smacked. When Grant, after hitting Bucky on the shoulder for the third time when Bucky dropped his guard, finally asked if the children couldn’t be sent away, Lord Phillip told him, “Do you think that in a battle, you can ask the enemy to pipe down? Distractions are a part of war. Learn to fight in spite of them.”

The children, delighted, got even louder.

At last they reached Tusaine. A royal delegation met them at the border, led by the young prince. He invited Queen Sarah and her closest attendants to join him and his family in the nearby fief of Vanaheim, where the king would receive them.

For this, Steve and Bucky were not pages, but a prince of the realm and a ward of the queen. The two of them joined the queen and her attendants in Fief Vanaheim, accompanied by a few choice servants and the gaggle of noble children Pinky had said were so common in Queen Sarah’s politics. The rest of the procession settled in their tent city around the fief, with the pages relegated to their usual out-of-the-way corner, so close to the surrounding woods they were practically in them.

The pages were forbidden from practicing weapons work while in Tusaine, on Queen Sarah’s orders. Pinky said it would give the wrong impression, having Tortallan knights-in-training acting all warlike while just up the hill, the monarchs tried to negotiate a peace. Instead they were given a month’s worth of homework from their various professors and ordered not to cause trouble. Lord Phillip checked on them twice a day, and that was it. Every night Natasha went walking through the quiet tent city, watching sleepy servants and minor nobility stagger back to their beds, and didn’t worry about being caught. It was almost like a holiday, and she relished the freedom.

They hadn’t been there three days before Bucky and Steve turned up. Natasha was sitting in the corner of the tent she shared with Jim, Gabe and Sawyer, listening while Gabe and Sawyer argued about crossbows. Bucky ducked inside and flopped across Sawyer’s bedroll with a groan. Steve followed, folding up and leaning against Gabe with a soft sigh. Gabe wrapped an arm around him, amused. “Shouldn’t you two be up at the castle, living the high life?”

“We’re bored,” Bucky whined. “We’ve been standing around like dolls behind the queen for three days straight. We don’t even _see_ the Tusaine princes. They spend all their time out hunting and we can’t go.”

“I _want_ to go,” Steve said unhappily. “But Ma’s afraid I’d fall off my horse and break everything.” He huffed. “Some knight I’d be if I couldn’t even stay on a horse.”

Gabe and Sawyer grimaced in sympathy. Natasha said nothing. She approved of the queen’s caution. Steve worked hard to keep up with the rest of them, but she privately thought that if he weren’t the prince, Lord Phillip would have dismissed him months ago. At least twice a week Steve collapsed during training and had to rest for nearly an hour before he could resume practice, and he was so exhausted afterwards that it was all he could do not to sleep through his afternoon lessons. Bucky, Dugan and Pinky helped him with all his homework, and even so he was desperately behind.

“You’re probably better off not hunting with them anyway,” Gabe said dismissively. “I hear they’re both full of themselves. And rude.”

Sawyer nudged Steve with his foot. “Yeah, you’d have punched them both before the day was through, and then we’d have to fight our way out of Tusaine.”

“At least Dugan would be happy,” said Gabe. “After that bandit nest we cleared out in the summer he’s got a taste for real fighting. He’s been spoiling for it all autumn.”

“If we’re not careful we’ll lose him to the King’s Own by Midwinter,” Bucky said with a grin.

“They’d give him back,” Gabe scoffed. “He’d eat them out of rations within a month.”

The others laughed, including Steve. Gabe winked at Bucky, who gave him a grateful smile. Natasha found herself smiling along with them. She wasn’t sure yet how she felt about swearing herself to Steve one day, but she had to admit she didn’t like seeing him unhappy any more than the others did.

“We should go out,” Sawyer said suddenly. “Get out of these grubby tents for a bit, see some of Tusaine. Shame to come all this way and see nothing but the camp.”

Natasha shook her head at this folly. They’d been flatly forbidden from leaving the camp for the duration of the trip. A little boredom was worth not getting on Lord Phillip’s bad side, not to mention avoiding an international incident.

“You know,” said Gabe in a pensive tone that Natasha had learned to dread, “I hear there’s a circus in town. I bet if we slip away now no one will even know we’re missing, not with Lord Phillip up at the castle dining with the queen.”

When Gabe spoke like that, reasonable and calm, he always got his way. Even Pinky could be persuaded to join the others in the most ridiculous escapades when Gabe was the one doing the persuading.

“Lord Phillip will skin us,” Bucky said matter-of-factly. “Not to mention the queen, if she finds out.”

Natasha nodded, relieved. At least Bucky understood how much was at stake.

“Come on,” Sawyer begged. “They’ll never know. We’ll be so quiet, no one will even see us leave. Besides, Steve wants to. Don’t you, Steve?”

Steve looked torn. “You could tell your mother you wanted to see how the people of Tusaine act when their king’s not there,” Gabe said sagely. “You can tell a lot about the state of a nation from the way its people act when the nobles aren’t around.”

“It’ll be fun,” Sawyer insisted. “Come on, Bucky, please?”

“We shouldn’t,” Steve said sadly. “It’d be embarrassing for Ma if we were caught, and the treaty’s important. Really, we ought to go back now, Bucky. What if someone goes by our room to check on us? It’s only another week until we go home – we can last another week.”

Natasha winced. Bucky couldn’t stand it when Steve was being all bravely self-sacrificing. Sure enough, the next words out of his mouth were, “Nah, they’re right. No one will miss us until tomorrow – you said as much yourself when we snuck down here. We deserve some fun.”

Sawyer whooped and pounded Bucky on the ribs. “Alright! I’ll go get Dugan and Jim. Gabe, you get Pinky. Nat, you’re coming too, right?”

Nat froze. “What?”

“Come on,” said Sawyer, “you’ll love it, I promise.”

Natasha shook her head. “No way. You’re all crazy. Lord Phillip will kill you all. Then he’ll bring you back and kill you again, just to be sure it sticks.”

“You won’t get in trouble, though,” said Gabe. “You’re never in trouble. If he catches us, he’ll be so busy killing the rest of us that he’ll barely notice you’re there. I know you don’t want him mad at you, but by the time we get back home we’ll have gotten up to some other mess and he won’t even remember this.”

Natasha looked at him askance. He wasn’t supposed to know she went cold and shaky when Lord Phillip got angry at her – she was trying to be normal. Normal people weren’t afraid of their training masters.

“We promise,” said Bucky solemnly. “We will get ourselves in trouble at least once before we’re back in Corus.”

“Pleeeeeeeease,” Sawyer begged. “I’ll lend you my best knife until we get back home, how about it?”

Natasha frowned at him, alarmed. She had stolen two knives to hide in her clothing, but they were table knives, not fit for proper fighting. The one she’d ridden to Corus with was no different. She itched with the need for something better, especially while they slept in tents out in the open, but this was another thing no one was supposed to know.

She’d been right about making friends. It was a bad idea.

“We don’t know this place,” she said quickly, changing the subject. “It could be dangerous.”

“What’s a little danger to a knight of Tortall?” Steve protested.

“We’re not knights, we’re pages, and we’re unarmed. Two bandits and their aging grandma could take you all out in three minutes flat.”

“So we’ll take weapons,” Bucky said reasonably. “And you can keep an eye out for bandits—”

“—or dangerous grandmas,” said Steve.

“—or dangerous grandmas,” Bucky conceded. “That way we’ll be safe.”

“We’re already going,” Gabe said placidly. “It’s up to you if you want to come along and make sure we’re safe.”

Natasha glared at him. He met her gaze with a smug little smile – he already knew he’d won. “Gods all damn you,” Natasha hissed. “We’d better not get caught.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you unfamiliar with Tortall, it's a medieval fantasy kingdom written by Tamora Pierce. Boys who want to become knights of the realm go to the royal palace at the age of about ten to become pages; after four years of heavy training they become squires, and four years after that they go through their Ordeal and become knights. The kids in this story are all between ten and fourteen years old. Natasha's probably a couple years older than the ten she's pretending to be.
> 
> The first Tortall book is about Alanna, a young girl who trades places with her twin brother so she can become a knight. (He goes off to study magic and become terrifyingly powerful.) Girls can't be knights, so she disguises herself as a boy. The prince of Tortall is a page too, being only a year or two older than her, and she quickly falls in with him and his friends. (Natasha doesn't have a brother in this fic, don't worry, just a horrible secret that involves a lot of death.)
> 
> Tortall is basically fantasy medieval Europe, with a little less plague. Neighboring countries include Scanra, to the north, your standard unwashed fantasy Vikings; Tusaine, to the north-east, which I have decided is Asgard (bc Asgard's not a lot like your standard unwashed fantasy Vikings, really); the Carthaki Empire, off the southern coast, sort of fantasy Africa; and Yaman, a string of islands far off the western coast, aka fantasy Japan. The Yamani Islands are really big on stoicness; in Yaman, it's considered impolite to show your emotions, like picking your nose at the table.
> 
> It's customary for any royal princes of Tortall to become knights. That's why Steve's there, though by rights he ought to be lying down somewhere, not getting repeatedly whacked with sticks in the name of martial arts.
> 
> (Incidentally, my exposure to Marvel stuff is pretty much the MCU, and I watched First Avenger a _real_ long time ago. I'm kind of making up the Howling Commandos' personalities from scratch, but if you happen to know and care about them, then please feel free to tell me more about them. I'd be very happy to incorporate their actual personalities into the story as much as possible.)


	2. Chapter 2

Sawyer collected Jim and Dugan while Gabe fetched Pinky. They all met a few yards into the woods by a dirt path Gabe had heard about. The path led them down to a nearby creek, only a few feet across but running fast and deep under a thin layer of ice. The boys found a narrow place to jump across and followed the path to the town of Vanaheim.

The town was less than a mile away from the fief that shared its name, all wide streets and low wooden buildings that spilled across a narrow valley to the south of the castle. The lamps in the town were already lit to fend off the shadows of twilight as the boys arrived, clattering down the hillside from the woods. Gabe said, “The circus is supposed to be on the west side of town, but the cook I was talking to said they put on a show in the town square every night.”

The town was noisy and full of life, but it wasn’t very big; it was easy to follow the flow of people to the square. It was a large one, particularly for a town this size, sporting a carved statue of some king or other at its center. There was a wooden stage set up in front of it, about as high as Natasha's waist. The square was thronged with people, buying food from street vendors who’d set up stalls or wandering in and out of the shops that ringed the square. The buildings were mostly two stories tall, made of wood and plaster, with small balconies along their upper-story windows, half of them occupied by gossiping spectators waiting for the show.

The boys pushed their way over to a stall selling roasted something on a spit – Dugan swore up and down it was rat, but Natasha proclaimed decisively it couldn’t be before catching herself. “I tried rat on a dare once,” she lied hurriedly. “Not a taste you forget.” Pinky suggested it was probably a tragically underfed sheep. Most of them were hungry enough to eat it anyway.

Suddenly a boy only a couple years older than Natasha leaped to the top of the statue in the center of the square, stepping on the stone king’s shoulders and balancing easily. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he cried, and the hubbub of the crowd hushed to an excited murmur. “Are you ready for a night of wonder the likes of which you’ve never seen before?” The crowd cheered.

“Unless, of course, you were here last night,” the boy added, shrugging a little, and the crowd laughed. “Then you know that what you are about to see will be the most amazing feats of strength and skill ever performed in the Eastern Lands!”

The crowd cheered again. The boy started introducing the first act, a group of acrobats who had purportedly performed in the royal courts of Maren, Galla, and Carthak. Natasha glanced around at her fellow pages and found them staring raptly at the boy on top of the statue. They gasped in delight along with the rest of the crowd as five men and women in colorful outfits jumped down from the balconies and started leaping and twirling through the gathered spectators. Natasha felt suddenly uneasy. None of the boys was watching the crowd, but a couple people in the crowd were watching them. The looks coming their way seemed curious and vaguely disapproving, not threatening, but Natasha shifted a little to feel the solid weight of Sawyer’s knife hanging at her hip and kept an eye on the people around them.

The acrobats finished their act by bounding up onto the wooden stage on the far side of the square, where they were met by a mage who made them all disappear in a puff of smoke. The crowd oohed appreciatively, and the mage twirled her fancy red cape in a flourish and started introducing her next trick.

The pages craned to see the stage. In another second they would start pushing through the crowd for a better spot, and then Natasha wouldn’t be able to protect them. It was far too easy to knife someone in a crowd, and almost as easy to start a brawl. Steve wouldn’t survive a brawl, no matter what he himself thought of his martial prowess, and the others would all want to defend him to the death for their stupid chivalrous code. Natasha cast about desperately for somewhere else to stand.

“There,” she said, and grabbed the back of Steve’s tunic to drag him off to the right. There was about to be an open space in front of a dressmaker’s store not far from the stage: a mother and her daughters were redistributing their bags of purchases there, paying no attention to the circus. They were bumping everyone around them with elbows and shopping bags, and there was a slight gap left between them and the rest of the crowd. In a moment they would walk off to go home and vacate the space.

Steve protested, but Natasha had a firm grip on the back of his tunic and he stumbled after her. Where Steve went, Bucky followed, and the rest of the boys trailed after. They reached the dressmaker’s shop just as the mother and her daughters departed. The boys returned to their admiration of the spectacle on the wooden stage, and Natasha returned to warily watching the crowd.

The circus continued. A troupe of jugglers were on the stage, throwing brightly colored balls at each other, when the boy who’d announced the show came up behind Natasha from a side street. She stood aside to let him pass for whatever theatrical errand he was on, but he stopped next to her with a friendly grin. “Little young for a guard,” he said.

“What?”

“You’re a little young to be a guard.” He nodded at the pages, who hadn’t noticed his appearance. “So you must be their friend, and the only one of the bunch with a sensible head on your shoulders.”

Natasha waited. She’d found in her months at the palace that if she stared blankly at people they usually kept talking, either to fill the silence or to explain to the poor confused child what was going on. Often they said much more interesting things than when Natasha pretended to understand what they meant and nodded along.

“You lot are here with the Tortallan folk, ain’t you?” the boy asked as the jugglers onstage switched to knives. Natasha nodded; there was no point in denying it, what with the cut of their clothes and the boys chattering away in a Corus accent. “Well, most folks in Tusaine have mixed feelings about the treaty with Tortall. Not me, don’t look at me like that, I’m not even from Tusaine. But especially here close to the border, things are kind of tense.”

He paused, waiting for Natasha to say something, but if there was an obvious response to his comment then three months in Corus hadn’t taught her what it was. After a few moments she settled on, “We don’t mean to cause any trouble.”

“Oh, I know it,” the boy said, tone still light and easy. “Work this job long enough and you learn to spot the troublemakers – bad for business, you know, if our audience leaves with bloody noses and empty purses. And I spotted you, looking about all wary and careful. But since I was higher up I saw what you couldn’t see, and that’s that there are four men planning to ambush you when you go back to your camp.”


	3. Chapter 3

Natasha narrowed her eyes at him. “Where? What do they look like?”

The boy grinned at her, pleased with her response. “Knew you were the sensible one – no time-wasting, just right to business. Two blond ones with their hair tied back in a horsetail, one of them with a missing eye and the other with a thin beard, going grey. One black-haired one with a long scar on his right cheek, one bald with a red glass drop in his left ear. He’s probably the leader; the one with the extra flash always is. They’re all biggish except the one with the beard, who’s all thin and wiry. Probably has muscles like steel, the thin ones always do.”

Natasha blinked. That was actually a useful description; if she’d been asking one of the pages, nearly all of them would have wasted time on trivial things like clothing and mean expressions, things that could change from one moment to the next.

“Weapons?” she asked.

The boy shook his head. “I couldn’t see. I’d guess short daggers, maybe a spare down their boots or something, but that’s just past experience talking.”

“Where?”

“One down this street behind me, one by that alley there, two back where you were, near the food stall. It’s the safest bet, that you’d go back the way you came, since you don’t know the town. The bald one’s there, keeping an eye out. There’s not much of a line of sight ’tween you and him, so maybe he’s got magic or maybe he’s just good enough at what he does that he ain’t bothered by that.” The boy shrugged. “Or he’s incompetent, but from the way they all move I don’t think that’s it.”

Natasha nodded, calculating. If the boy was telling the truth, they’d have to find some way of slipping away unnoticed – no, that wouldn’t work, not in a town they didn’t know with an experienced robber keeping an eye on them. So they’d have to get away from them in the woods, somehow, except Sawyer was as loud as two elephants and Percy hated the dark. She grimaced. At least in the woods if it came down to a fight the pages had a little experience with the terrain, but Natasha didn’t like their odds of getting out unscathed, not against four strong men. She bit her lip unhappily. It was so tempting to just take the men out herself, one by one from the shadows, but she didn’t know the terrain. If anyone saw her, if word got back to the Tortallan camp... 

The boy was still there, watching her face as she ran through the options. She wondered what he thought he could see her thinking. He probably thought respectable-looking high-born boys like her would go straight to the cops when they got in trouble.

Natasha blinked. Actually, she was a respectable-looking high-born boy now. “Don’t suppose there’s any sort of town watch or something about, is there?” she asked.

The boy grinned again. “They never miss a show. No one trusts circus folk. They’re by the butcher’s.” He nodded over to a closed shop a few doors down from where they stood. Sure enough, two watchful-looking men were leaning against the storefront, trying to look like they weren’t enjoying the show.

“Well, that’s my cue,” the boy said, glancing again at the stage. The jugglers had moved on to flaming torches, and the mage had come out again to pull the fire into phoenix shapes that danced between the jugglers. “Good luck,” he said, and sauntered off before Natasha could thank him.

He had no reason to help, which made what he’d said automatically suspicious. But then, he had no reason to lie, as far as she knew, and maybe he really was just trying to keep his audience from getting mugged. Natasha worried at her lip and thought.

When the jugglers bowed and the mage stepped forward to introduce the next act, Natasha tugged on the shirt of a man standing nearby. “If you please,” she asked, “who are those two men there by the butcher’s?”

“Dirk and Stane,” the man said distractedly.

“What do they do?”

“They’re coppers,” the man said, shaking her off as the next performers leapt onstage. Natasha retreated, satisfied. 

She cast an eye over the pages, who were watching raptly as three of the acrobats from before did some sort of fancy ribbon dance. The boys were as happily oblivious as ever, a couple of them still gnawing absently at the remains of their underfed-sheep-on-a-stick. No one in the crowd was bothering to give them funny looks anymore, not now that the show had picked up. It might be safe to go find some sort of vantage point where she could get a view of the whole square.

She eyed the nearby buildings. The dressmaker’s shop they were in front of had a smooth plaster façade, but the shop next door was unfaced wood. There was even a balcony with sturdy wooden supports for her to hang onto, just a few feet off the ground. Easy as pie. Natasha dug her fingers between the slats of wood and started to climb.

When she reached the window and got a good grip on the wooden struts, Natasha turned around. From here she could see that the square was more a sort of wonky oval shape. There were seven streets leading away from it, three of them narrow enough to be called alleys, most of them largely empty and poorly lit. That was all she was able to see before she noticed the bald man standing by the food cart, watching her.

She let her eye pass over him without stopping, as if she were just enjoying the view of the crowded square, then turned her gaze to the stage. The ribbon dancers seemed to be coming to a finale of sorts, twirling their colored ribbons every which way. Suddenly three arrows shot down from the rooftop behind the stage, pinning the ribbons to the floor.

The crowd gasped in alarm as the ribbon dancers scattered. Natasha’s heart pounded in her chest, and she clutched at the shutters with one hand so she could grab for Sawyer’s knife. She found the archer, silhouetted against the night sky – an easy target, but probably out of range for a knife throw. She made sure his bow was pointing only toward the stage, and then scanned the rooftops for any more waiting shadows. She should have done that before – stupid, stupid.

The archer leaped from the rooftop to the stage in a single graceful somersault. He wore a brilliant purple and blue costume with trailing sleeves that fluttered as he fell, and swept around him as he gave a low bow. Natasha sighed in relief along with the rest of the crowd: no one was attacking. It was just more of the show.

The archer straightened from his bow and Natasha found that she recognized him. It was the boy who had warned her about the robbers, now wearing purple paint on his cheekbones in a long swoop that drew attention to his eyes. He introduced himself as “the Amazing Hawkeye, greatest archer in the Eastern Lands.”

One of the dancers, annoyed at having lost her ribbon, started creeping up behind him with exaggerated stealth as he talked. The Amazing Hawkeye loosed an arrow straight into the air, and it flew up high before landing behind him. It passed not three inches in front of the dancer’s nose to stick in the stage at her feet. The dancer stumbled back comically and fell on her butt, her painted mouth a red ‘o’ of surprise. The crowd burst into laughter. Hawkeye fired another arrow between her legs to make her flee the stage, and the crowd roared.

The boy really was an excellent marksman. He fired at painted targets a handspan in diameter carried by a few of the acrobats, who twirled them and threw them in the air for him to hit. He didn’t miss once. Then he did some sort of complicated flying leap and somersault combined to get back to the statue of the stone king, and started shooting at red banners held aloft by acrobats on rooftops around the square. Each banner had a yellow star somewhere on it; the boy hit every single one. 

Natasha watched, impressed, for maybe a little longer than she really needed to ensure the bald man wouldn’t be watching her as closely. When she did another scan of the crowd, she saw the bald man and his bearded accomplice were still lounging about by the food stall. They were out of sight of the town watchmen; if that was deliberate, that could mean they expected the watchmen to recognize them. Maybe Natasha could use that. After scanning the crowd a bit further she found the black-haired man with the scar standing a few yards away on the edge of the square, apparently engrossed in the show. The last one, the blond man with his hair tied back and a missing eye, must be the one stationed up the alley behind the boys, off to Natasha’s left.

Half the archer’s quiver of brightly colored arrows was exhausted by the time the last red banner was furled and his attention returned to the stage. The acrobats had returned with the painted targets for him to hit, but this time they’d brought the mage along. She enchanted the targets so they flashed in bright colors or occasionally became invisible.

The archer made a great spectacle out of worrying that he could hardly shoot a target he couldn’t see, now could he? The mage crowed in triumph, while the boy hung his head in shame. “I don’t think I can do it,” he told the crowd morosely. “Do you think I can do it?”

The crowd cheered. “Really?” he said. “You think I can hit an invisible target?” The crowd cheered louder. He kept at it, prodding them into offering more encouragement, seeming to perk up a little more with every cheer until the crowd was bellowing at him to try. Natasha found herself smiling in spite of herself at the overdramatic showmanship.

“Alright,” he shouted at last, pumping his fist. “Start it up,” he told the mage and the acrobats, to enthusiastic yelling from the crowd. The acrobats started their dance, throwing the painted targets high in the air and catching them in slow dips so the targets never stopped moving. The mage set them to flickering in and out of invisibility. The boy fired an arrow – and missed, hitting one of the acrobats’ peaked caps and shooting it clean off the man’s head. The acrobat stomped his foot in indignation and nearly missed catching one of the targets as it fell toward him. “You see,” the boy said sadly. “I just can’t do it.”

The crowd cheered again. “What’s that?” he asked. “One more try? Well alright, if you think it’ll work.” He fired another arrow, squinting down the shaft and aiming carefully, and caught the edge of one of the invisible targets. The crowd cried out in delight, and the boy joined them, throwing his fists in the air. “Did you see that?” he demanded. “Did you see that? Do you think I can do it again?”

He could do it again. The boy started hitting more and more of the invisible targets. The mage got so annoyed that she added more difficulties, sparkling lights to distract the archer or duplicate targets that winked in and out of existence in the middle of the acrobats’ dance. None of it made any difference. “But this is easy,” the boy crowed, and started firing so fast he was barely aiming. He sat down on the stone king’s shoulder and fired sideways, locked his knees around the king's neck and leaned back so he was firing upside down. Every arrow found its mark, until the mage shouted “Enough!” and brought her arms down sharply. All of the targets clattered to the floor.

The boy had one arrow left. He pulled it out and gave it a considering look as the mage shook her fist at him in rage. Then the mage turned on her heel and stormed off across the stage, her long cape billowing behind her. The archer turned full circle, to make sure the whole audience was watching him; then he winked and fired the last arrow.

It caught the back of the mage’s cape, pinning it to the stage. The mage stumbled and nearly fell, staggering comically to regain her balance. The acrobats all rushed in to help, and through their attentions managed to knock the mage to the ground. Every time they tried to help her to her feet, they got in each other’s way and knocked her down again.

“I’d better run,” the archer said when there was a break in the crowd’s laughter, “before she turns me into a toad again.” He gave another dramatic bow, balancing on the stone king’s shoulders without difficulty, and the crowd clapped wildly. Then he clambered down the statue to run off through the crowd, away from the stage where the mage was finally climbing to her feet despite the eager assistance of the acrobats, and vanished into a dark alley.

Natasha shook herself. She wasn’t supposed to be distracted by the circus, no matter how impressive the boy’s shooting was. She went back to scanning the square, as discreetly as she could, trying to figure out some sort of escape plan.

 


	4. Chapter 4

In the end all she could think of was the obvious solution, which was also the one least likely to work. Natasha shimmied down from the wall and resettled Sawyer’s knife so it hung on her other hip – if the mugger had been watching her when the archer made his entrance and she’d clutched at her belt like an idiot, then he knew now where the knife was, and she had to move it. Then she tugged on Dugan’s sleeve. “I’m going to get a drink,” she told him, pointing at a stall a few feet from the butcher’s shop. Dugan nodded, but he barely gave the stall a glance before turning back to the stage. Natasha shook her head despairingly.

She didn’t bother going to the drinks stall – she had no money to spend, not even on maintaining a cover. She went straight to the two watchmen and said, “You know how a circus always brings trouble?”

Both of them turned to give her a deeply unimpressed once-over. She asked them, “Do you happen to know a bald man with a long thin nose, small ears, and a roundish sort of chin, who wears an ear drop in his left ear?” She’d gotten a pretty good look at him from her post on the wall.

The policemen’s gazes sharpened with interest. “He’s over by the meat stall down that way,” she said. “He’s got three friends with him. I think he wants to rob those boys over there, seeing as they’re so busy watching the show you could grab the nose off their faces and they wouldn’t notice it was missing.”

“Sharp-eyed lad, aren’t you?” one of the watchmen said. “Dirk, go by Peter’s house and tell him Magnus Steffenson’s in town. Then run down the station, round up whoever’s in tonight and surround the square. Be quick about it – we’ll lose him in the crowd if we wait until the show’s over.”

“If it helps,” Natasha offered, “I got a good look at two of the other fellows.”

Once again the watchmen raised their eyebrows at her. She knew they were wondering how she’d come to know so much, and that no answer she gave would really satisfy them, but it was worth the risk of being remembered. She was never coming back here, after all.

The policemen heard her descriptions, and then Dirk ran off to fetch the rest of the watch. The other man, Stane, said, “The Duke’d have our heads if we let someone like Steffenson muck up the Tortall treaty. When the lads get here I’ll fetch a couple of them and we’ll walk those boys back to their camp, just to make sure there’s no trouble.”

“I’ll go tell them,” Natasha said, surprised. That was a fair bit better than she’d hoped for.

When she got back to the pages Sawyer had gathered up a few coins from each of them. He started elbowing his way to the stage to drop them in the performers’ bowl. Natasha’s heart leapt into her throat. Sawyer and Gabe were the only people in the crowd with obviously Carthaki features and dark skin; if the locals objected to a Tortallan treaty so much, how would they react to someone so obviously foreign shoving his way through them with abandon?

But either the locals had no issue with Carthak, or no one wanted to ruin the show. Sawyer returned unscathed. “Nat, there you are!” he said. “We’re going back after this act – Jim’s dead on his feet, and the rest of us are pretty beat too.”

“Wait just a bit,” she said. “The local watchmen want to give you an escort back to camp. They’re worried you’ll get jumped by some robbers who are about.”

Steve frowned. “Do they know who we are?”

“Yes,” Natasha said, painfully aware of how many people were within earshot, “they know we’re Tortallan. That’s enough for them.” Mentally she willed Steve not to say anything about being royalty. “They know it’d put the treaty at risk if _anyone from Tortall_ got mugged here," she said pointedly, "and apparently the Duke of Vanaheim would blame the town watch if it happened.”

“That’s hardly fair,” Steve complained.

“You keep thinking nobles are fair,” said Pinky. “I don’t know where you get these odd notions.”

“Must be that mad mother of yours,” Bucky said.

Steve shoved him, laughing. “Probably,” Steve said. “Alright, so we wait.”

The boys turned back to the stage, where the acrobats were twisting themselves into improbable shapes. Jim leaned on Dugan and dozed off.

Barely ten minutes later, Stane the watchman ambled up to the boys and introduced himself, and he led them down a well-lit street and back to their camp. He and the other two watchmen he’d brought along chatted idly with the boys as they walked, but even tired as they were, the boys didn’t say anything to suggest they were pages or sons of the nobility. Natasha was as shocked as she was proud.

When they got within sight of the Tortallan camp’s torches, Steve admitted sheepishly that they’d snuck away, and they’d get in a lot of trouble if the guards walked them into camp. Stane lifted his eyebrows, unmoved. Gabe pointed out that they were hardly in danger anymore this close to the camp, and Sawyer kept repeating mournfully, “Lord Phillip will flay us alive, _flay_ us.” Eventually the guards agreed to leave them a few yards into the trees.

The boys all gave them heartfelt thanks. “But don’t go doing this again,” Stane warned. “You’re more than welcome in town, but let us know next time you want to see the sights. We don’t none of us want that treaty to fall through because the likes of Steffenson look at you and see an easy target. Send your friend here ahead to bring word,” he said, smiling at Natasha. “I bet no one ever gets the jump on him.”

“You got that right,” Sawyer said around a yawn, slinging an arm over Natasha’s shoulders. “He’s got eyes in the back of his head.”

“We won’t cause you any more trouble,” said Steve. “We promise.”

The other boys nodded. The watchmen bid them good night, and the pages set off toward the torchlight. Steve and Bucky dragged themselves off to sneak back into Fief Vanaheim, while the rest of them staggered to their tents and fell into bed.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A brief note: if you recall, Yaman is Fantasy Japan, while Tortall is Fantasy Europe. As such Yamani bows are done with the palms flat against the thighs, while Tortallan bows involve putting one arm behind your back and either putting the other against your chest or flourishing it, depending on how fancy you feel like getting.

Early next morning a runner came to tell Jim, Gabe, and Sawyer that they were to put on their best clothes and report to Lord Phillip up in the castle. “Immediately,” the runner specified.

“Oh gods,” Sawyer moaned when the runner had gone. “They’ve found out. How did they find out?”

Jim shrugged, unconcerned. “Probably one of the servants saw us.” Jim never complained about getting caught – he almost seemed to expect it, really. He still went along with all of Sawyer’s madcap ideas. Natasha couldn’t understand it.

“We don’t know how much got told, if anything,” Gabe said firmly. “We don’t even know why they’re calling us up there.”

“So we keep our mouths shut and let Lord Phillip kill us in his own time,” Sawyer said. “Got it.”

Gabe shot a lopsided smile at Natasha. “Told you you wouldn’t get in trouble.” Natasha frowned at him, feeling vaguely guilty and not liking it.

The three of them got dressed in the red and gold tunic and hose that pages wore for official functions and left with matching airs of doom. Even Jim, whose face was blank and serene with Yamani calm, held himself like he was marching to his own execution.

Natasha sighed. They’d never learn to be convincing liars if they were this obvious whenever they thought they’d been caught.

She pulled out the history homework Lord Phillip had presented them with when they arrived at Vanaheim. She was trying to piece together an analysis of the conquest of the Copper Isles by the Rittevon family when Pinky ducked inside. “They’re not here,” Nat said. “They got called up to the fief, all three of them.”

Pinky frowned. “Just them? That’s weird. But I came for you, actually. Any chance you can help me with the mathematics homework?”

“If you help me with this history.”

“Rittevons?” Pinky asked. Natasha nodded. “I love the Rittevons, they’re all barking mad. Makes for the most incredible stories.” He plopped down next to Natasha and grabbed the papers in her lap. “Never go to the Copper Isles,” he advised her, and started reading over her attempts at an analysis.

Dugan showed up a few minutes later, also to ask Natasha’s help with math. Grant of Wardswatch dropped by not long after and offered to trade knowledge of botany for Pinky’s help with history. Natasha watched him a little curiously. Bucky and Steve didn’t like him, so he hardly ever joined their group, but he was always friendly. Eager to please, really. Natasha thought he might be lonely and looking for a place to belong.

He could have her spot, as far as she was concerned. She was still annoyed with herself for having gone into town with the boys yesterday, and even more annoyed with them for going. If it weren’t for the boy from the circus they’d have been mugged, and probably killed, too, since Dugan and Steve responded to threats about as well as a fire responds to oil. Having friends, she decided firmly, was not worth the headache.

Though it did make getting her homework done a fair bit easier. Pinky gave Natasha a thorough and convoluted explanation of the Rittevon conquest while Dugan added commentary and Natasha took copious notes. Then the two of them demanded that Natasha hurry up and explain their math problems. Grant joined in a beat later, chivvying her on with too large a grin, like he was worried she’d take offense.

Gabe, Jim, and Sawyer returned around lunchtime. “You don’t look very dead,” Natasha commented.

“Thoroughly unkilled,” Sawyer responded with a grin.

“The queen wanted to show us off,” Jim sighed, sounding like someone had died after all. “Proof of how well other treaties have worked, how happy we foreign folk are in Tortall, that sort of thing.” He dropped down onto his bedroll and buried his face in his pillow.

“Jim bowed wrong,” Sawyer snickered, sitting down next to his friend. “He started doing a Yamani bow, tried to switch to a Tortallan one halfway through, caught himself and went back to a Yamani bow, and ended up flapping his arms around like a crazy person.”

“I hit Gabe in the side,” Jim groaned into the pillow. “In front of the _queen.”_

“Yeah, but I took it like a man,” Gabe said. He leaned over Dugan’s shoulder to peer at his math homework. “Oh good, you’ve figured it out. See, it’s not that complicated.”

Dugan growled at him. “That’s cause _Nat_ actually knows how to explain things so they make sense.”

“Even mathematics,” Grant agreed.

Gabe sniffed. “You have no appreciation for my sophisticated educational techniques.” He sank down next to Pinky on Sawyer’s bedroll.

“We met the Tusaine princes,” Sawyer said brightly. “They’re decent enough. Kind of weird, but royalty always is.”

Pinky gasped and put a hand to his chest. “Are you implying that _our Stevie_ is – dare I say it – kind of weird?”

Sawyer snorted. “He’s the weirdest one, gods all bless and keep him.”

The boys nodded and shrugged in a wave of agreement, some of them rolling their eyes as they did. “So what are the princes like?” Dugan asked, not willing to waste time affirming what everyone already knew. “Is Steve going to punch them out and start a war?”

Gabe held up a hand and waggled it. “Even odds. The older one, Thor, he’s… boisterous. Friendly enough, but thinks he’s Mithras reincarnated.”

“Thor might even throw the first punch,” Jim added, turning his head so his voice wouldn’t be muffled by the pillow. “If Steve said something he took as an insult.”

Gabe hummed in agreement. “He’s not touchy, exactly, but he sort of expects you to agree that he’s amazing.”

“The younger one’s touchy,” Sawyer commented. “At one point the king said only one of his sons was much of a fighter, and Prince Loki’s face went all sour.”

“It’s probably a sore spot,” said Pinky thoughtfully. “He’s got a really impressive Gift, apparently, but magic isn’t really valued in Tusaine. Dad says he was going to study at the City of the Gods but the king put a stop to it at the last minute, and no one’s really sure why.” It was an open secret that Pinky’s father, Count Percival of Pinkerton Reach, was the queen’s spymaster. If he said no one knew why, then it truly was a mystery.

“At least he doesn’t spend the whole time talking about himself,” Gabe said. The other two nodded in agreement. “Bucky nearly rolled his eyes right out of his head, listening to Prince Thor.”

“Not visibly,” Sawyer hastened to add. “His smile just got all brittle and murderous, you know, that look where he wants to kill someone but he manages to make it look charming and rakish instead of psychotic.”

Grant shook his head. “Wish I could’ve seen that. I still can’t imagine Bucky as any sort of diplomat, let alone Steve.”

“You’ll see it soon enough,” Dugan said. “Midwinter, maybe. They’ve both got the charmingly innocent smile down to an art. It’s awful, you’ll love it.”

“All the old ladies dote on them,” Pinky added.

Natasha tried to picture Bucky and Steve surrounded by enchanted grandmothers. It was surprisingly easy to imagine. But smiling sweetly while people acted stupid all around them? She cocked her head and squinted, trying to conjure up the image.

“So… Nat,” Sawyer said, breaking her concentration. “I hear you’re offering math help.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the Tortall books, the Rittevon family conquered the Copper Isles (fantasy Vietnam, if I remember correctly) a century or two ago, and proceeded to marry each other so much that their slight tendency toward insanity became an established family tradition. There are two long books about how poorly that eventually pans out for them, and I fervently recommend them – they're the Trickster books, and they're about spies and crows and revolution.
> 
> In other news, Pinky's named after his father, who's known as Percy to his friends, and goes by Pinky because he didn't want to be Percival the Seventh or Percy Junior. He grew up at court, where it's not unreasonable to identify yourself by your fiefdom, so Pinky it was. (When he goes home to Pinkerton Reach, everyone calls him "Little Percy," which he finds mortifying. He was deeply relieved that the royal procession didn't go near his home fief, lest his fellow pages find out.)


	6. Chapter 6

They went to watch the circus again two days later, despite Natasha’s vehement protests. This time it was at Bucky’s insistence. “They’re putting on a play for their final show,” he said, eyes shining with excitement. “They were talking about it at the castle. It’s amazing, danger and romance and adventure and pirates. We have to go.”

“No way,” Natasha said. “We almost got _killed_ last time, are you dense?”

“Pleeeease?” Sawyer begged, while Jim stood next to him and made puppy-dog eyes.

“We’ll tell the watchmen that we’re there,” Gabe promised.

“Come on, Nat, it’ll be incredible,” said Bucky. He was practically vibrating with anticipation.

“We’re going,” Steve said firmly, putting an end to the discussion. He would do anything if it made Bucky happy – even, apparently, walk right into a mugging. Natasha ground her teeth in frustration.

Jim fetched the others; Sawyer lent Natasha his best knife again. She gripped its smooth leather hilt and grumbled under her breath as she followed the boys through the woods, across the creek and down into Vanaheim.

This time they’d come earlier, and were able to find a better spot to stand. Natasha made sure that spot was up against the statue in the center of the square, so they’d have its solid base at their backs if anything should happen. Steve, Jim and Bucky immediately climbed up onto the pedestal to get a better view of the still-empty stage.

Natasha glared at them all and announced, “I’m going to find the watchhouse.”

Some of them turned to look at her. “Yes, Nat,” said Dugan, grinning. “Thank you, Nat. I don’t know how we’d survive without you, Nat.”

Natasha sneered and flounced off. After a moment she heard hurried footsteps coming up behind her. Evasive maneuvers flashed through her head, as did the position of each knife she had on her, but it was just habit. She’d already recognized the slightly uneven gait. “Sorry, Nat,” Steve said as he reached her. “I know you just want to be safe. We didn’t mean to make you feel bad.”

Natasha ignored him. She reached out to tap on the arm of a woman in a bright red dress with green trim. “Excuse me,” she said, “could you tell me how to get to the watchhouse?”

“Down that street, take the first left. Big blue building with bars on the windows, you can’t miss it.”

Natasha thanked the woman and kept going. Steve had to step a little quicker to keep up. “Dugan didn’t mean to be rude,” he said. “He just doesn’t think sometimes. You know what he’s like.”

Natasha didn’t answer, just glared down the street in front of her. Steve tried a couple more times before giving up and walking with her in silence.

The watchhouse was a thin wooden building, two stories tall, that exuded an air of combined menace and neglect. The pale blue paint on the walls was peeling, revealing another, dirtier blue beneath it; the brass bell hanging by the front door was caked in so much rust, it looked likely to crumble away at the first strong breeze. The thick bars on the windows, however, were very solidly iron. Natasha eyed them uneasily as she and Steve climbed the front steps.

The bell by the door had a long chain attached. Natasha pulled it gingerly. It made a horrible rasping sound that could, if one were feeling very generous, be called ringing.

The man who answered the door was thin and pale, with black hair and a permanent sneer. He looked down his nose at Steve and Natasha and declared, “You’re not from around here.”

“No,” Steve snapped, annoyed with the man’s tone. “We’re from Tortall. We’re here to see a man called Stane.”

“Stane’s not in,” the man snapped right back. “Come back tomorrow.”

He tried to shut the door. Natasha shot a hand out to stop him. “Stane said to let you know if we came back. We’re letting you know.”

“Why, are you dangerous criminals or something?” The man sniggered. Steve started to say something outraged in response, but Natasha elbowed him in the stomach.

“If Stane shows up, tell him we were here,” she said, keeping her voice flat and unoffended. The man sneered at her and slammed the door. Natasha let him.

“How dare he,” Steve snarled. Natasha grabbed him by the shoulders and steered him down the steps. “Can you believe that? He ought to be demoted. He ought to be fired!”

Natasha hid her own anger behind a blank face and kept one hand on Steve’s arm as they went back to the town square, in case he decided to turn back and punch the watchman. For all his talk of equality, Steve had a bad habit of expecting to be treated like royalty.

“What if we’d needed help?” Steve ranted. “What if we’d been robbed? If we had a crime to report? Someone could be dying right now, and the town watch doesn’t even care!”

Natasha shrugged. “He doesn’t know us. We don’t look important, dressed like this. Why should he care?”

“Because he’s in the city watch!” Steve exploded. “It’s his _job_ to care! This is why you _have_ a watch, so that even the people who aren’t ‘important’ have somewhere to go when they’re in trouble!”

To this, Natasha found, she didn’t have an answer. She walked silently at Steve’s side as he angrily delineated his plans for hiring better watchmen.

~ ~ ~

They made it back to the statue just as the play was starting. Pinky handed Natasha some underfed sheep on a stick, while Dugan boosted Steve up so he could sit on the statue’s base between Jim and Bucky. Natasha looked uneasily at the people pressed up around them on all sides, and wished they’d been forced out to the edges of the square like last time. At least there she’d been able to climb a building and get a better view.

“Nothing’ll happen,” Gabe said in her ear. She froze in surprise. “No one’s going to attack us right here in front of the stage – we’re too visible. Everyone’s looking our way. We’ll be careful when we leave, but until then, we’re safe.”

Natasha frowned up at him, but she had to admit he was probably right. It hadn’t occurred to her that the crowd could protect them as much as endanger them.

Gabe smiled. “Enjoy the show,” he suggested, and turned his attention to the stage. Natasha valiantly resisted the urge to stick her tongue out at him.

The play turned out to be about Sir Marius the Black-Handed, a knight from the ancient kingdom of Barzun, who was framed for treason and ran away to be a pirate. While raiding the nearby coasts of Tyra he discovered a nefarious plot against his king and met a mysterious lady, all in one rather confusing scene that Natasha thought could have done with a lot less juggling.

Bucky and Steve started arguing with Dugan about what had just happened in a furtive whisper. Natasha listened with half an ear, but she’d heard a faint jingling noise where it shouldn’t be.

She looked up at the boy crouched behind the stone king’s legs. He grinned at her and hopped down to stand next to her with another quiet jingle. He was wearing a brown overshirt with two lines of metal rings sewn across his chest in an X – he’d been onstage as a guard in one of the early scenes.

“I see you lived,” he said, just loud enough for her to hear. “And I’ve not seen the bald man or his gang since that night. Run ’em off, did you?”

Natasha snorted. “Hardly. I told the cops they were there.”

“Aww, and here I thought you’d killed them all single-handed. I’ve been telling my mates they’re buried in the woods outside town.”

Natasha shrugged. She was a little embarrassed, to be honest, to have had to ask someone else to chase off the bad men as if she were a child. If she’d been alone—

She looked over the boys in front of her, all raptly watching the show. None of them had noticed the appearance of the circus boy, not two feet behind them. She despaired of them, she really did.

“Couldn’t risk it,” she said. “See that little one?” She nodded at Steve. He’d gotten so invested in his whispered argument with Dugan that he was leaning precariously off the statue’s base to whisper fiercely in his ear; Bucky had a hand absently fisted in Steve’s shirt to keep him from falling off. “He’d have tried to fight them all himself, with his bare hands if he had to.”

The circus boy gave out a sharp laugh of surprise. “A stiff breeze’d knock him flat!”

“Yeah, but he doesn’t stay down. Not ever. He’s ridiculous.”

The boy grinned. “Sounds like my kind of people.”

Natasha found herself smiling back. It was nice, sharing a smile with someone. It still didn’t happen often enough that she didn’t relish the experience.

“I owe you,” she said quietly. “You probably saved our skins.”

“Yeah,” the boy said. “You do.” He stuffed his hands in his pockets and leaned back against the base of the statue, in the empty pocket of space where he didn’t have a view of the stage. It was almost casual. “And I hate to be crass, but since we’re never going to see each other again, it’d be great if you could pay me back now.”

Natasha blinked. That made sense. “Not sure there’s much I can do,” she said doubtfully.

“I accept cash donations,” he said, cheeriness a little forced. He watched her out of the corner of his eye.

Natasha bit her lip. “How much do you need?” The only money she had was what she’d ridden to Corus with. There hadn’t been any chances to get more since then, especially since she hadn’t dared to steal anything in the palace – there was too much at risk if she was discovered. The sum total of her monetary savings was five silver nobles and seventeen copper bits.

“Thirty-seven gold crowns,” the boy said. Natasha nearly choked. “I’ve gathered a fair bit myself already, but lucky me, I got sold pretty pricey.” He shrugged, awkward. “I’d run away, but old Imaren up there’s wicked sharp at finding spells.” He jerked his head back at the stage, where the mage had come on and was declaiming something dramatic.

“You’re a slave?” Natasha thought slavery was illegal in Tusaine, just as it was in Tortall.

“Indentured,” the boy said stiffly. He shrugged again, a sharp jut of shoulders. “Seemed like a good idea at the time. Better than going to one of the big Maren farms to be some lordling’s talented pet. No one ever comes out of those.”

Natasha nodded. She’d never heard of Maren farms, but she understood well enough. Sometimes all you had were bad options.

“I wouldn’t expect the whole thing from you, of course.” The boy grinned, and it almost looked carefree. “I figure if I can rescue one pack of foreign rich folk a night, I’ll be free by the end of the week.”

He was grinning at her, inviting her to laugh along, but she couldn’t. “I’m not rich,” she said without meeting his eyes. “I don’t—I can give you three silver nobles and… ten coppers?”

The audience gasped in tandem at something happening on the stage. The boy’s low whistle almost vanished in the awe of the crowd. “Three silvers, huh?” he said, just loud enough for Natasha to hear.

The crowd cheered at whatever dramatic derring-do Sir Marius was pulling off onstage. Natasha risked a glance at the boy’s face, and found him smiling, flat and humorless. “Guess you think that’s big money to us poor circus folk. Or maybe that’s just what your friends’ lives are worth to you.”

Natasha flinched. He thought she was proper nobility, rolling in money. He thought she was holding out on him. “I can– I can ask the boys,” she found herself stammering. “I’ll get as much as I can. I promise.”

The boy gave her a long look. “Don’t trouble yourself,” he said at last. He swept her a low bow, theatrically gracious. “Your lordship.”

He turned and left without another word. Natasha felt very small.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maren is a country to the southeast of Tortall, known for large plantation-style farms. If Natasha had grown up like a normal person, hearing gossip at market and so on, she'd know this. (In another few months her politics and geography professor will get around to teaching about Maren, and then she'll know more about it than she ever wanted to know, down to how much its import taxes vary depending on the weather.)
> 
> Tortallan currency goes, top down, gold crown, gold noble, gold bit, silver noble, copper noble, copper bit. The wiki describes some rather dramatic differences between them, a hundred copper nobles to a silver one and so on, suggesting that Natasha actually has a fair bit of money, but I'm going to ignore the wiki and/or cite inflation to say that she has the rough equivalent of fifty dollars. I'm also going to say that currency is standardized across the Eastern Lands, aka this whole continent, because otherwise we have to deal with exchange rates and that is more math than I am willing to put into a fic.
> 
> I made up Sir Marius the Black-Handed and came up with a loose plot for his quest – he's after the fabled Dominion Jewel, which grants immense power to the rightful ruler of a kingdom - and then decided that Sir Marius' story has been twisted into legend over the ages, but was based on a real historical figure, a lady knight from back when they were canonically common. Her name is Dame Marba, and she's so upright and moral that she refuses to take up with pirates, so I'm not sure how to write her story. The pirates were kind of an essential part there. If I ever have the time, though, I'm going to at least sketch out the details of what she did, if for no other reason than that it will amuse me.


	7. Chapter 7

On the stage, Sir Marius sailed east and got attacked by mermaids and hurroks. Eventually he found whatever port it was he was looking for, where the mysterious lady was somehow waiting for him. She told him to leave his ship and ride inland, so he did, because apparently mysterious ladies with suspiciously quick methods of transportation should never be doubted.

Natasha tried to focus on the play, then caught herself and tried to focus on the crowd. She couldn’t see anyone who wasn’t directly in front of her, and even craning her head she couldn’t keep an eye on whoever was on the other side of the statue, next to Pinky and Sawyer. Pretty soon the back of her neck was crawling with the sensation of being exposed. She pressed her back against the statue’s base, but it was no good. She gripped Sawyer’s knife so tightly she could barely feel her fingers and tried to control her breathing.

She didn’t see the hooded figure moving through the crowd. She cursed herself for that, later. He wore a plain brown cloak and hunched his shoulders so his face stayed hidden, and he came up behind the statue unnoticed. He was less than a foot away from Natasha when he hoisted himself up onto the statue’s base and reached between its legs. Natasha heard it too late, the soft fall of his leather boots on the stone. She looked up just in time to see the hooded stranger poke Steve in the shoulder and whisper, “Boo.”

Steve had never done well with surprises. He nearly fell off the statue’s base. Then he spun around, delight painted across his face. “You made it! Bucky, look, it’s—”

“Sssh!” The stranger lifted his hood just enough to show his face to Bucky and Jim, who both gaped at the sight of him. “I’m here in secret,” he said, a grin in his voice.

Bucky glanced past the stranger, to where Natasha held Sawyer’s knife an inch away from the stranger’s belly and wrestled with herself. She’d sworn off unwarranted stabbing, yes, but she didn’t appreciate being caught off guard like this. Didn’t sneaking up on Steve mean the stabbing was warranted?

Bucky raised his eyebrows at her and said, “Nat, this is our friend. Jim, Gabe, Sawyer, you met him a couple days ago.”

Natasha slipped the knife out of sight and offered a thin smile as the stranger turned around. He was young, with a broad face framed by thick blond hair, long in the fashion of Tusaine. It wasn’t until Jim slid to the ground to offer him a seat that Natasha realized who he must be.

Prince Thor of Tusaine wriggled through the statue’s legs to sit between Steve and Bucky. The other pages murmured polite greetings and Steve gave him a quick recap of the play so far. Natasha slunk back to her spot at the statue’s side, tucked in next to Gabe. _Watch the show,_ she thought viciously. _It’s not like you’re good for anything else._

Sir Marius was fighting some sort of flying monster – a griffin, maybe. He looked to be losing. Just as the griffin was about to pounce on Sir Marius and put an end to the play, a glittering arrow flew up into the air from behind the stage. The whole crowd watched its trajectory as it arced up toward the sky, and cheered as it pierced the griffin’s wing. Marius finished the griffin off with a dramatic flourish of his sword and turned to greet the archer. This time the archer wore black, and had thin whiskers painted on his cheeks. He was some sort of mischievous cat spirit, and he told Marius that he was destined to find the fabled Dominion Jewel and bring it to his king.

Natasha tried to ignore the growing discomfort in the pit of her belly. She had a horrible feeling it might be shame. Shame at being a useless sentry; shame at her unpaid debt to the circus boy; shame for even caring enough to be ashamed. She gritted her teeth and glared at the stage.

Sir Marius had a dream vision of his king on his deathbed, an eerie scene with, thankfully, no juggling. Steve stiffened at the sight of the dying king, surrounded by uncaring attendants. Natasha wondered what he was thinking of.

Then he went even tenser, every muscle taut, and this time Dugan, standing in front of Steve, did as well. Natasha leaned forward to catch sight of their faces and found both of them, and Bucky, watching the stage with matching scowls of rage.

The next time all the pages heard it: Prince Thor said, “A woman in power will listen to anyone who can give her a good fuck.”

Dugan gave out a low growl. Gabe put a warning hand on his arm.

“Tell me, does she sleep with all her advisors at once, or do they have to take turns?”

Natasha leaned forward a little further, to see past the edge of Thor’s hood. He was watching the play with rapt attention; he grinned in delight when the cat-boy mentioned the Dominion Jewel.

“Bet she didn’t even wait until your father was cold in the ground,” he said, but his mouth didn’t move.

Steve finally rounded on him and said, through gritted teeth, “Apologize.”

Thor turned to Steve in surprise. “What are you talking about?”

Dugan snarled. “You heard him, you dirty bastard.”

“How dare you?” Thor roared, and shoved Dugan so hard he fell over. Steve responded by punching Thor in the face.

Thor caught Steve a blow in the stomach that sent him crashing off the statue’s base and into Gabe. All the pages shouted in outrage. Bucky grabbed Thor’s hair to keep him from following, pulling him off balance so he flailed his arms wildly.

Steve had gotten to his feet, but Gabe grabbed him around the waist before he could launch himself at Thor. Thor had turned his wrath on Bucky, who jumped off the statue’s base and out of the way of Thor’s flying fists. Thor leaped after him, landing on Bucky and driving him to the ground. The two of them rolled around on the ground, landing furious punches and even more furious insults.

A space had cleared around the pages, but at the edges of it were angry faces. They would get a lot angrier if they recognized their prince. Natasha’s throat went dry. She eased a second knife out of its sheath as gently as she could. Steve was clawing at Gabe’s arms, trying to get to Bucky. Jim and Pinky were both hanging onto Dugan, holding him back from the fight.

On the stage, Sir Marius and the king’s attendants were speaking louder to drown out the sounds of the fight, looking distinctly disgruntled. Only the archer, who had snuck into the dream vision somehow, was staring offstage, eyes narrowed, at something on the edges of the square. Suddenly he swung his bow up and fired two arrows in quick succession.

Without stopping to think, Natasha raced through the crowd, dodging and weaving and jabbing with her elbows when she had to. Through the shifting shapes of the audience she caught sight of someone – someone short, almost as short as her – in a plain brown cloak just like Thor’s, pinned to a shop wall by an arrow through each sleeve. Natasha reached the edge of the square, squeezing between two huge men who were craning their necks to find the source of the commotion by the stage, just in time to see the cloaked figure angrily clench their fists. Green light flared along the arrows for a moment. Then they both shattered into pieces. The mage pulled free of the arrowheads and hurried down an alley.

The only way to catch a mage was off guard. Natasha flung herself into the alley, reached the mage in two bounds and leaped on them from behind, bearing them to the ground. They hit the cobblestones with a painful smack of flesh on stone. Natasha’s head collided with the mage’s, and she saw stars.

She didn’t need her eyesight to wrap an arm around the struggling mage’s neck and squeeze. The mage writhed underneath her, digging sharp fingers into her arm. Suddenly there was a flash of green light, blinding her all over again, and her muscles turned to jelly. Natasha gasped for breath, fighting to keep her suddenly weak arms wrapped tight around the mage’s neck.

There was another flash of green light, and needles pierced every inch of her skin. Natasha screwed her eyes shut and bit down on the pain. The needles pierced her skin again and again, and now they weren’t needles but knives, white-hot knives that tore out her flesh and poured fire into the holes, and Natasha curled into a ball as her whole world condensed into endless agony.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> When one of the characters talks about demanding/offering satisfaction, he means a duel.

When the pain stopped, it was all at once, a sudden absence of feeling that left her floating. Natasha wondered if she’d died. There was a babble of distant voices, echoing behind the ringing in her ears. Slowly she opened her eyes, almost expecting to find herself in the Black God’s kingdom, but knowing that it was a vain hope.

She’d lost her mind to agony countless times, but she’d never died of it yet.

She was staring at a pair of boots, fuzzy in her still-blurred vision. The person wearing them crouched down in front of her and said something, words that slurred together in her ears. Someone else tugged at her arms, and she allowed them to move her as they wished, mechanically obedient as she let go of the body underneath her – she hadn’t noticed there was a body underneath her, but there it was, the soft give of it unmistakable, the stillness of it horribly familiar. Someone pulled her to her feet and she stood to attention, eyes fixed straight ahead, and waited for her head to clear enough that she could remember who it was she’d killed this time.

“Nat?” said a voice, loud and jarring, and then in the wrong language, “Are you okay?”

Someone shook her, and she looked up into a ruddy face and blue eyes and—“Dugan?”

Dugan had his hands tight on her shoulders and was peering worriedly down at her. Natasha blinked away the ghosts she’d been expecting to see and forced a smile. “What happened?” she asked.

Dugan’s face broke into a grin, much more believable than the shaky baring of teeth she was offering him. “He’s alright,” he said loudly, pulling Natasha into a tight hug and releasing her with several staggering pats on the back. Natasha looked around and realized she was surrounded. All the other pages were crowded into the alley, half of them staring at her and half at the figure on the ground. Natasha followed their gaze and tried not to be sick. She hadn’t wanted to kill anyone again, not so soon – not ever, really. Pinky nudged the mage over onto his back with a boot, revealing a boy no older than she was, with fine-boned features and a pale face made paler from death.

Prince Thor stepped forward and crouched at the fallen mage’s side. Natasha blinked in surprise – she had forgotten all about Thor – and then flinched away in horror when he said softly, “Brother?”

Pinky reacted faster than anyone – he dropped to his knees on the ground and started running glowing hands over the fallen mage, using his healing Gift to check for signs of life. Thor turned to Natasha and snarled, “What is the meaning of this?”

Natasha shook her head, wishing she could just disappear. “I don’t—He—” Her voice was a hoarse whisper, faint enough that she wondered if she’d been screaming. She cleared her throat. “It wasn’t Prince Thor who insulted the queen,” she said, talking to the ground. “I didn’t—I think—” She was starting to shake. She tried to suppress it, but Sawyer must have noticed. He put an arm around her waist and pulled her close, tucking her in against his side. Natasha tried not to lean against him too obviously.

“Insulted the queen?” Thor asked, in a dangerous voice.

“We all heard it,” Dugan growled.

“Or at least we thought we did,” Gabe said carefully. “Your brother is an accomplished mage, Your Highness, is he not?”

Thor turned on Gabe. “If you suggest—”

“We’re not suggesting anything yet,” Bucky said sharply. “But we all heard you – or at least your voice – say several unpardonable things about Queen Sarah. Did you say these things?”

Thor stood, rage like thunder in his tone and in his bearing. “A prince of Tusaine would never malign an ally, nor a lady.”

“Are you sure?” Bucky said, with a pointed glance at Loki. “Are you absolutely sure?”

Thor hesitated. “If this is some form of trap,” he started, but there was doubt in his voice now.

“If it is a trap,” Gabe said, “it was not laid by Tortall.”

Bucky asked, “How likely is it that your brother would want us to fight in the town square?”

Thor was silent. He looked at the pages, one by one, trying to judge their honesty. When he came to Natasha, she forced herself to meet his eyes, though it made her sick. Pinky was still crouched over the fallen prince and Thor didn't seem particularly worried, which meant he probably wasn’t dead, but she had still attacked and nearly murdered Thor’s brother. She wanted to crawl away and hide.

Thor finished scrutinizing the pages, and the suspicion in his eyes was replaced by regret. He sighed heavily, and turned to Steve. “I am sorry for my brother’s behavior,” he said gravely. “He is inordinately fond of jests, and often fails to understand the true consequences of his pranks.” He bit his lip, then took a deep breath and said, “I must ask you not to tell anyone of this. If my father should hear of it, I fear… I fear it would not end well.”

The pages exchanged uneasy glances. “He said some pretty terrible things about Queen Sarah,” Sawyer said mulishly.

“On behalf of the crown, I apologize for the insult,” Thor answered. “I am sure he meant none of it; he wished only to cause strife between us.”

“We know,” Dugan growled. “That’s no excuse for what he said.”

Thor turned to Dugan and said formally, “If you would demand satisfaction, I am willing to offer it. I swear to you Tusaine means your queen and your country no ill.”

“That’s the problem, though, Your Highness,” said Pinky. He was still kneeling over Loki's prone form, hands glowing with magic, and he didn’t look up as he spoke. “He wanted us to fight. He wanted to jeopardize the peace treaty.”

Thor paled. “No. No, it was a prank. My brother is a terrible prankster; he meant only that we should embarrass ourselves. He is a loyal son of Tusaine, and Tusaine wishes for nothing more than peace between our nations.”

“We did more than embarrass ourselves, Your Highness, and we did it in public,” Pinky reminded him. “If anyone in that square recognized you, it won’t matter what we do or don’t say about Prince Loki. The crown prince of Tusaine and the crown prince of Tortall fought in the middle of Vanaheim, in front of dozens of witnesses. If it hadn’t been for Nat, this could easily have ended in war.”

The alley fell silent as everyone realized the truth of Pinky’s words. “I swear to you it was not intentional,” Thor said heavily. “And I ask you again not to tell my father of this. He would… My brother does not deserve what my father would do to him for this.”

“Doesn’t he?” Gabe said quietly.

Thor’s regal pride cracked. “Please,” he begged. “For my sake, if not my brother’s.” He turned again to Steve, and Natasha thought to wonder that Steve hadn’t said a word yet. It wasn’t like Steve not to jump right in with an opinion and a fist to back it – and it was his mother Loki had insulted. Natasha craned her head around Sawyer to see him properly. He was frowning faintly, looking from Thor to Loki and back again. As she watched, his eyes sought Bucky, catching on the huge bruise forming on his cheek. 

Steve’s expression hardened with resolve. Natasha winced, and looked away. She didn’t want to see Thor’s face when Steve denied him.

“We did fight in public,” Steve said slowly. “We can’t hide that.” Natasha sighed and stared down at her feet. She shouldn’t care, really, if the princes of Tusaine got in trouble, got hurt – it wasn’t like she’d even met either of them before tonight. She didn’t care. She had no reason to care.

No one had ever protected her the way Thor was trying to protect his brother.

Natasha gritted her teeth against the thought. What did it matter if Thor loved his brother enough to fight for him? She’d seen some of the other girls do that, and it never ended well. At least a royal prince of Tusaine wouldn’t go through half of what she had every time she’d displeased Ivan.

“If someone else tells our parents about the fight, it could turn ugly,” Steve continued. “They might assume the worst. But if _we_ tell them, then we can make it sound like nothing much happened. We can say it was a misunderstanding, or…”

“Sparring,” Jim supplied. Everyone looked over at him and he bowed, Yamani-style, formal as he always was around anyone outside of their little group. “If it please Your Highnesses, you could tell your royal parents that one of you questioned the other’s fighting ability, and you decided to settle the matter immediately.”

“No one would doubt it,” Bucky said drily. “Steve has decked plenty of people before when they said he was too small to be a knight.”

Natasha blinked. She wasn’t sure she understood how it was the boys had decided to help Thor after all, but she found herself weak-kneed with relief. She clutched discreetly at Sawyer’s shirt to keep herself upright. She shouldn’t care what happened to Loki, she shouldn’t, but she couldn’t help it.

Natasha glanced over at Thor and found him grinning in such naked relief that it was almost physically painful to look at. “I thank you all,” he said sincerely. “I will gladly tell this lie to my father, and say further that you proved yourself mightily in battle. Though I hope you know I would never question your ability to become a knight, Prince Steven. Only a fool would do so. You have the bearing of a true warrior.”

Natasha snorted silently – that was some pretty blatant flattery. Steve was suppressing a proud little grin, though, so Natasha supposed it was working.

The boys fell to discussing how they would explain away Bucky’s blossoming bruises. No one suggested the obvious solution: tell the truth. After the first punch, the fight hadn’t been between Steve and Thor at all. Natasha wondered if it was to save Steve’s pride that no one brought up how Bucky had drawn the fight to himself. 

Eventually Bucky socked Dugan in the ribs and said, “There. We were fighting over a girl. Totally unrelated. Problem solved.”

“Ow,” Dugan said plaintively. “Fine, but I won.”

That was about when Loki woke up. He stirred weakly, groaning, and his eyes fluttered open. They landed on Pinky, who gave him a thin-lipped smile and said, “Welcome back, Your Highness.”

Loki sneered. “Whatever you’ve done to me, villain, you will regret it.” It came out in a rasping whisper.

“He has just saved your life, brother,” Thor said disapprovingly.

Loki’s eyes widened. “Thor?” He glanced around at the other boys, caught sight of Steve and Bucky, and winced.

“Hello, Loki,” Steve said coldly. “I hear you have some interesting opinions about my mother.”

Loki stiffened. Awkwardly he pushed himself to his feet and brushed himself off. When he looked up, all discomfort was gone from his face. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said smoothly.

All the pages bristled. There was such a sudden and all-encompassing promise of violence in the air that Natasha took a step back, half-intending to flee down the alley and find a shadow to hide in. 

Loki flicked his eyes warily from one face to another. “Your mother is a lovely lady,” he said with careful calm, “and a most impressive queen.” He shrugged, casual, practiced. “I doubt these count as particularly interesting opinions. I am sure the whole court feels the same way about your lady mother.” His voice was still painfully hoarse from being choked, but he made no move to rub at his bruised neck, and didn’t so much as clear his throat. Steve would have done the same, Natasha thought. She wondered if all princes could so easily ignore their pain. Maybe it was part of being royalty. 

For a long moment, it looked as if another fight might break out. Then Steve looked Loki carefully up and down, sniffed in disdain, and turned to Thor. “I’m afraid we should be going, Prince Thor. It’s getting late. All sorts of unsavory people might be on the streets at this hour.”

A few of the boys glowered at Loki, in case he’d missed the insult and needed it pointed out to him. Loki sneered back. Thor didn’t push it, offering Steve a polite bow. “I am grateful for your compassion in this matter, Prince Steven.”

Steve bowed back, and turned to leave. The pages fell in behind him, all of them bowing briefly to Thor before following their prince. No one so much as nodded to Loki.

Natasha copied their bows, but before she could turn to go, Thor said, “You’re the one who attacked my brother, are you not?”

Natasha froze, still bent at the waist. In all the discussion of diplomacy, she’d hoped everyone had forgotten that she’d nearly killed the prince of Tusaine.

Thor was still waiting for an answer. “Yes, Your Highness,” she rasped. “Sorry, Your Highness.”

“Are you injured?”

Natasha shook her head, and used the movement to check her distance from the walls. If Thor tried to arrest her, he’d have to hold her down, and she was pretty sure she could slip out of his grasp and get down the alley before anyone else could help him. If she went toward the square, she could lose herself in the crowd and be gone in under a minute.

“I am pleased to hear it,” Thor said. Natasha didn’t move. She still felt hollow and wrung-out inside – if Loki used his Gift on her again, she wouldn’t stand a chance. Sawyer’s knife was still in its sheath at her side; if she threw it at Loki, she might have a second to get away before he could conjure up any more spells. She’d have to throw it somewhere that would cause a lot of immediate pain – but preferably without maiming him permanently, or the bounty on her head might end up too big to run away from.

“Please, stand,” Thor said. She did, keeping her face blank as she watched both princes for sudden movements. Thor smiled at her. “You have averted a war, my friend. Tusaine owes you a great debt.”

Natasha stared. His face was open and friendly, without any anger or guile. It dawned on her that she wasn’t about to be arrested.

Thor bowed to her as he had to Steve. Natasha wasn’t up to speed on the etiquette of bowing, but she was pretty sure that was some kind of big deal, a prince bowing to a foreigner, even a noble one. “If there is anything you should need while you are in my country, you have only to ask.”

Natasha blinked, and blinked again, and blurted out, “Thirty-seven gold crowns.”

Thor raised his eyebrows. Loki scoffed. “How very noble,” the younger prince drawled hoarsely. “Nice to know Tortallan boys can be bought so cheaply.”

Natasha flushed. “It’s not for me,” she hurried to explain. “It’s for a boy from the circus. He’s the reason I cau—” Natasha stopped. Loki was still emanating wounded pride, and fury glimmered in his eyes like firelight. He wouldn’t be able to touch any of the Tortallans for fear of ruining the peace treaty – what if he tried to take revenge on the circus boy instead? 

“I owe him a debt,” Natasha said firmly. “He helped me with… something important, the other day.”

Thor nodded, and clapped Natasha on the shoulder. “It is indeed noble to help another,” he said, with a pointed look at his brother. “You shall have the thirty-seven gold crowns.”

“Thank you, Your Highness.” Natasha bowed again, and ran to catch up with the others.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> God I love writing Thor. No one else talks with semi-colons.
> 
> Did Loki mean to start a war? Was this just a dumb prank? You decide! I sure as heckity heck don't know. Loki just does stuff like this and no one, not even Thor, possibly not even Loki, and definitely not the writer, can be entirely sure of his motivations.


	9. Chapter 9

The circus had made its camp a ways outside the town, on the outskirts of the forest that edged up against the town wall. Painted wagons and tents huddled under the drooping evergreens in a disorganized jumble. A few people moved sleepily between them in the grey dawn light, carrying boxes and chests into the wagons. Most of them gave Natasha curious looks as they caught sight of her, and she had to stifle the urge to turn tail and run away.

Natasha gathered up her courage and approached a large woman in a glittering green dress. “Excuse me, do you know where I can find the archer?”

The woman looked her up and down, and grinned. “You’re his Tortallan, aren’t you? The one who kills bandits with your bare hands.”

Natasha took a step back, irrational panic shooting through her at being so accused. “What? No, I’m just—I mean I don’t—”

The woman laughed at her stammering and gestured back the way she’d come. “He’s over there. Other side of that red wagon, the tent with the purple circles on it. Just go right on in. Give him a proper sendoff,” she added with a wink. 

Natasha stared at her in blank confusion until she chuckled and went on her way. Natasha filed the comment away to decipher later and went looking for the archer’s tent.

The tent did indeed have purple circles on it, in interlocking bulls-eye patterns. They looked as if they’d been painted on some time ago, and were starting to wear off. Natasha approached it warily, uncomfortable with how many eyes were on her. She wished she knew how to be inconspicuous in a circus camp. No fewer than four people were watching her with varying levels of curiosity as she reached the tent flap and called out, “Hello?”

There was no answer. “Are you in there?” she called. She realized that she didn’t actually know the boy’s name.  “I need to talk to you.”

Still nothing. Natasha felt increasingly awkward, standing in the middle of a circus camp being gawked at. She pulled the flap aside and cautiously stuck her head in the tent. 

It was just barely big enough for a bedroll and a large wooden trunk. The bedroll was occupied, so Natasha undid the toggles holding the tent flap closed and ducked inside. There wasn’t quite room for her to stand. She crouched down in the small space next to the wooden trunk and whispered, “Hey. Wake up.” She poked the sleeping figure in the legs. There was a grumbling murmur in response. “Are you the archer?”

The bedroll went suddenly still. “Who’s asking?” 

“The—the Tortallan. You helped me avoid some bandits the other night.”

“Oh. It’s you.” The boy sat up and peered at her in the dim light from outside. Natasha thought he might be glaring. “What do you want?”

“I’ve come to pay what I owe you.”

“Oh. Thanks,” he said tiredly. Natasha handed him the coin purse that had come from the fief that morning. A yawning messenger had found her sparring with Jim, thrust the purse into her hands, and tersely informed her that the circus was leaving in three hours. She’d sworn out loud when she’d seen the wealth of gold coins in the bag, and had a hell of a time dodging Jim’s questions.

“Look, your lordship,” the archer said wearily, reaching for the coin purse, “I appreciate it, truly I do, but if you’re expecting bowing and scraping over three silvers—”

He trailed off as he felt the unexpected weight of the gold coins. “Thirty-seven crowns,” Natasha said. “I counted.” She had stopped in the woods to do a hurried count. There had been fifty gold crowns, but thirteen of them were now squirreled away in Natasha’s pockets, carefully distributed for minimum jingling.

The archer gaped at her, apparently unable to find his voice. “Shit,” he finally said. He opened the purse and took out a coin, staring at it in numb shock for a few moments. He bit it to check that it would give beneath his teeth like real gold. “Shit,” he said again. 

“This is enough, yes?” Natasha confirmed.

The boy looked back at her, eyes still wide with shock. “Thank you,” he said fervently. He bent over in a weird hunch and started bobbing oddly, saying, “Thank you, your lordship, you’re a prince among men, a paragon of generosity, all the gods bless and preserve you—”

Natasha leaned back, alarmed. “What are you doing?”

The archer grinned up at her. “Bowing and scraping. I figure you’ve bought as much of it as you want, with a sum like this.”

“No,” Natasha said uncomfortably, “this is a debt I’m repaying. I’m not buying anything. You averted a war. This is the price I can pay you.”

“I did _what?”_

Natasha swore internally – she shouldn’t have said that. If the archer went around bragging and Prince Loki caught wind of it, he’d be in big trouble. “It could’ve sabotaged the treaty,” she stammered. “If we’d been mugged and someone had gotten hurt, or killed. The… the queen might’ve gotten mad at the Tusaine king, and then the treaty could fall apart.”

It wasn’t even a lie. The archer didn’t question it, just sat back with a low whistle. “I hadn’t even thought of that. Good thing I came along, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Natasha said simply. “Thank you.”

The archer blinked at her, nonplussed. “You’re welcome,” he said, meeting her gaze squarely. He seemed somehow more sincere than he had at any other point, as if his perpetual grin and cheery nonchalance were as much an act as anything he did onstage. Looking into his eyes in the dark, cramped tent, Natasha was struck with the sudden certainty that this boy spent his days wearing smiles for a mask, and she felt a pull in her chest so strong she couldn’t breathe, like the Black God had grabbed hold of her lungs and squeezed. It took a long, dizzying moment for Natasha to identify the feeling: kinship. He was just like her.

Then the boy looked away, and grinned again, and the moment passed. “Guess you did ask your friends to pitch in,” the boy said, a little awkwardly, directing it to the coin purse rather than at her. Natasha thought his sincerity might have taken him by surprise, too. “Tell them thanks from me. I know this ain’t much for high-born folk such as yourselves, but for me this is…” He laughed a little, disbelievingly, and now that she was looking for it Natasha thought she could hear the theatricality in it. “This will change my life.”

It was theatrical, but it wasn’t dishonest. There was genuine gratitude in his eyes as he said once more, “Thank you.”

Natasha had no idea how to handle gratitude. “I should go,” she said abruptly, and turned to do just that, ducking out of the tent and into the sunlight. The sun had risen properly while she was in the tent, and the circus camp had as well. What had been a quiet sprawl of tents and wagons had turned into a hive of activity and noise. People of all shapes and sizes in garish, multicolored outfits strode back and forth, carrying boxes or leading packed mules or toting huge bundles of fabric that might have been tents, and all of them were shouting orders or gossiping or calling out greetings. Natasha froze, overwhelmed for a moment by the unexpected stream of people passing in front of her – she could handle much bigger crowds than this, but usually she had some warning. 

It gave the archer time to scramble out after her. “Do you want an escort back to your camp? I can walk you there,” he offered.

Natasha shook her head. “I’ll be fine.”

The archer grinned. “Of course you will. Well, your lordship, it has been a genuine pleasure making your acquaintance.” He bowed low, just as theatrically gracious as he’d been the night before, only this time it felt like friendship rather than mockery. Natasha smiled, and bowed in return. 

When she left, walking through the crowded circus camp, she was still smiling.  
  



End file.
